FBI says crime is down

Holistic SurvivalWe’ve all been taught that crime, like the cost of gas and rate of inflation, never goes down. That’s well and good, sounds perfectly sensible to us – except that the FBI has released statistics that show crime in the year of 2009 was down across the board when compared to the previous year.

What the heck? That can’t be right. Don’t you know that everything is going to hell in a hand basket? That may still be true but numbers don’t lie. Let’s not abandon out survival techniques because everything is peaches and cream from here on out, but let’s not ignore good news either.

1. Violent crime (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) were down 5.5% in 2009. That may not be too impressive a number to the jaded but we’d say it’s significant.

2. Property crimes (burglary, larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft) was down 4.9%.

3. Arson is a property crime but the FBI breaks it out separately. Arson declined by 10.4% compared to the prior year. That’s pretty darn impressive.

What we can draw from this data is that murderin’, rapin’, stealin’, and burnin’ has gone down quite a bit recently. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is “Why?” We’ll have to leave that question to the social researchers to sort out. The FBI only presents the facts.

At Holistic Survival, we say “Good for us!” While it would be nice to know why crime is declining, and we’re sure theories will began to be expounded upon, but for today let’s just be happy there’s a smaller chance of being accosted by bad guys than there used to be.

The Holistic Survival Team

Flickr / Marxchivist